Imperfect Harmony

By Amanda Torrey

A marriage of convenience isn’t on Harmony Peterson’s agenda when she’s forced to sneak into Healing Springs to retrieve important papers, but if marrying a stranger keeps her from reuniting with her estranged sisters, how dumb would she be to turn down the offer? She’ll do whatever it takes to keep her vow to protect the infant she hadn’t planned on raising.

Keegan O’Malley knows he’s not qualified to save anyone, but if a sham marriage can help this beautiful, intriguing stranger who forced her way into his life and maybe help him in return, why should he talk himself into reason? Though he’s failed to live up to his moral code before, he has to believe he’s somehow been given a second chance to right the wrongs.

A fake marriage may be something they can live with. But can they honor the unspoken promise to keep their hearts out of the bargain?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Torrey
• Release date: Apr 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370050079

Amanda Torrey

When not writing, Amanda enjoys hanging with her kids, reading, playing in nature, obsessively checking Facebook, visiting Disney World (as often as possible), ROAD TRIPS, and going to the movies. She loves meeting new people, and especially loves to hear from readers!

Book preview

1

Harmony didn’t allow her life to be ruled by guilt, but she couldn’t quite nudge away the ball of regret that gathered in her gut when she thought about how she had deceived her twin.

She brushed those thoughts aside and focused instead on the sleeping baby in her car. The one who needed her protection far more than Simplicity ever had.

Harmony cased the building, looking for the best spot to break in. She had researched Simplicity’s boyfriend enough to learn that he was previously a POW, so she’d guess he was probably more paranoid than the ever-trusting Simplicity. Probably wouldn’t keep a key hidden in the open or neglect to lock a window.

She wouldn’t give up, even after discovering that their basement door was locked up tight. Simplicity and her latest love interest were gone for the long weekend, and Harmony had to get in, get her paperwork, and get the hell out of this saccharin sweet town before she vomited all over her good shoes.

Stripper shoes didn’t come cheap. Not the high-class ones.

She’d get in. She was an expert at getting around obstacles. And she had the extra incentive of not wanting to be forced into following through on her promise to meet up with her twin sister when Simplicity returned from her weekend away.

Harmony would be long gone by then, papers in hand.

Could’ve been worse. Harmony had assumed that her sister Freedom would have had the papers locked up in a safety deposit box in some high-security bank after Harmony accidentally shipped them to Freedom’s house with a box of stuff from their mother’s storage unit. Luckily Simplicity had intervened. And judging from the phone call she had suffered through with Simplicity, Simplicity had kept all of the sisters from looking at the papers.

Her secret was safe.

That annoying nibble of guilt hit harder. Simplicity remained loyal even when Harmony had long ago checked out of the family.

And she had sounded so annoyingly excited when she heard Harmony’s voice on the phone.

The guilt wasn’t strong enough to make Harmony want to reunite with her estranged family.

The sudden chill in the autumn New England air and the realization that she should have packed warmer clothes for both her and the baby did, however, encourage her to move a little faster.

After trying all of the doors and windows that she could reach, Harmony grew frustrated. This would be harder than she hoped, but she wasn’t above a little breaking and entering if done for the right reasons.

And protecting that little cherub-faced innocent was the best reason of all. The sweet little babe who somehow had inherited her eyes.

The only innocent human she knew in the entire world relied on her. She wouldn’t let him down.

Something glittery caught her eye as it shimmered in the moonlight. Harmony smiled to herself as she discovered a fairy house. No use in ignoring her twin-intuition, she bent down and opened the tiny moss-covered door, reaching two fingers in to drag out the key she knew would be there.

Mr. POW may be paranoid, but Simplicity wouldn’t trust herself to always remember to bring a key. Of course she’d hide one somewhere. And of course it would be in a tiny purple fairy house.

Relieved, Harmony trudged through the crunchy fallen leaves and up the back stairs. She let herself into the back porch and fumbled in the dark to slip the key into the lock.

She paused when she heard some rustling.

Sounded like footsteps.

Was that a dog growling?

Or a man?

Simplicity had said they were leaving for the weekend. Yeah, there was a car in the driveway, but they’d only travel in one vehicle, so naturally they’d leave one behind.

Think, Harmony.

She gasped inwardly as the door swung open and she nearly stumbled inside. She hid her surprise at finding someone at the door—in her line of work she had to think quickly and hide how she really felt all the time.

The man was big. Dangerously big. Broad. Dark. His energy was just as dark and big and dangerous. If he wanted to, he could snap her in half.

This wasn’t Simplicity’s boyfriend, Ethan. She knew from the photos she saw online when she googled her family to get an idea of what they were up to and the town’s website had featured photos of Simplicity and Ethan at some winter festival type of thing.

No, this was someone else.

Harmony plastered a seductive smile on her face, which wasn’t hard since her job required it.

She quickly assessed the situation.

The guy was in pajama bottoms and nothing else. So he hadn’t broken in before her—he was here for a reason.

That reason sauntered over and rubbed himself against Big Bad Dangerous guy’s leg.

A dog. The guy was probably housesitting while Simplicity and Ethan were away.

Okay, so there was an obstacle she hadn’t counted on. A houseguest. And a dog.

The guy stared at her impatiently, waiting for her to say something.

She put a hand on her hip and jutted out her bottom lip.

I was trying to surprise you. She held the key up in her hand and batted her eyelashes.

You’ve succeeded. Who are you?

His voice was deep and lush and ran over her skin with the texture of velvet and the smoothness of silk.

She suppressed a shudder. This wasn’t how she had anticipated her night.

She was caught in a trap that fate had set. The stakes were too high not to gnaw her own leg off.

Harmony stepped into the warm kitchen and placed the tip of the key on his chest. She licked her lips and sucked her lower lip between her teeth as she dragged the key in a slow, lingering path down his chest. His very, very hard chest. His very, very warm chest. His very, very, very sexy chest.

I’m your dream come true.

She watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat and his sharp intake of breath. He didn’t stop her from pulling the key down to his abdomen.

Is this a joke?

Does it feel like a joke? She tilted her head to the side and slid the key along the waistband of his pants. Are you going to invite me in the rest of the way?

She forced her voice to remain seductive and husky, just the way the men liked it. Her training did not betray her. No fear or anxiety slipped into her act.

Maybe. He grabbed her wrist as she began to slide the key past the elastic of his pajama pants. But you’ll need to tell me why you’re here. Who sent you?

Oh, fine. Ruin the surprise. She pouted. She had to bat her eyes with extra emphasis to compensate for the absence of her super long fake lashes. She had to make this quick. The baby wouldn’t sleep for long, and she didn’t want Taniqua to be stuck in the car alone with the baby in the middle of this crappy little town.

On tiptoes, she barely cleared his shoulders. He didn’t help by leaning down to capture her whisper, so she had to force the whisper to be a little louder, which she worried would dim the effect. And there’d be no ear blowing…

He released his vise-like grip on her wrist.

Ethan sent me as a gift to you. He thought you could use a little entertainment while you take care of his house and his dog.

With that proclamation, she stepped away from him, luring him to follow. She swayed her denim-covered hips, wishing she had something more comfortable to dance in.

But she was flexible, both in body and in life. She’d manage.

He was a stone. Unyielding. Expressionless at first, but the slightest gulp betrayed his inner thoughts.

He was interested. Attracted. His brain didn’t want to accept the invitation, but his body had already RSVP’d.

Music would have been nice, but desperation drove her to improvise.

She also could have used her work uniform, but she had changed out of her stripper clothes at the first rest stop she came to on the way to New Hampshire from Florida. In her haste, she had forgotten to grab different shoes, but that mistake came in handy now that she had to perform an unplanned striptease. She could work her magic with any old clothes. The shoes made the show complete.

You want to do this in here? She gestured toward the kitchen table. Or someplace more comfortable?

He cleared his throat in a classic nervous tic, but his eyes gestured toward the living room.

She let her hips lead the way while her eyes held him captive as she watched him over her shoulder.

He followed her lead.

When he stopped at the entryway to the living room, she grabbed his hand and danced him further into the room. She positioned him in front of the couch and, with a gentle touch of the chest, encouraged him to sit. And then the real show began.

His excitement was palpable, but his energy was increasingly dangerous. Something about the intensity of his eyes as he maintained eye contact with her made something inside her burn. It was almost as if he didn’t want to be excited, yet his body betrayed him.

She had dealt with men who felt guilty for enjoying a lap dance while their girlfriends or pregnant wives waited up for them at home more times than she could count. In order to break past the barriers, she had to make herself irresistible.

She teased him with a glimpse of her hard-earned flat stomach as she toyed with the hem of her sweatshirt. Super strippery, right? Plain black with a palm tree on the front. But it was the first sweatshirt she had grabbed from her closet, and even that had almost been forgotten until she remembered what fall could be like in New England.

She made it work, though. His eyes widened and his gulping came more frequently. Maybe she’d incorporate this girl-next-door-in-boring-clothes routine into her act. She could see how it could fuel fantasies. Girl walks in off the street. Starts taking off her clothes. What more could a guy dream of?

While she wasn’t in the business of making dreams actually come true, she most certainly was in the business of making men think they had walked into a dream.

Maintaining eye contact with him while she did her pelvic thrusts and isolated her ribs proved to be far more challenging than usual. She was accustomed to hardening her mind while softening her body. To taking herself on a mental vacation far, far away. To slipping into a zombie sort of mode, where her smile was plastered on her face and her eyes were inviting, yet the real her was far from the prying eyes of the lascivious clients.

This guy, though. She didn’t know what it was, but he made her uncomfortable.

Probably because she didn’t do private parties off-site. That must be the problem. She’d never put herself in a situation where she could be hurt. Dancing at the club was safe—she had her security team. Besides, the dancers looked out for each other.

Here, in her sister’s living room with a guy whose name she didn’t know…

Her intuition told her she was safe.

Now that her sweatshirt was off, she slipped back into her typical, confident routine.

The non-costume, plain street clothes were throwing her off. That’s all it was. No biggie.

She maneuvered around the room as if she owned it, toying with the button on her jeans as she undulated. She turned, giving him her back, and let her ass do the distracting as she frantically tried to figure out how she was going to get the papers she needed.

She flicked her button open and slid the jeans over her hips, waving her ass seductively as she lowered the jeans. His expression remained stoic as he took in the sight of her yellow thong and the muscular butt she worked so hard to maintain.

Harmony turned to face him and strolled closer, lowering the pants down her thighs with the speed of cold molasses.

Most of her costumes were tear-away items, so she struggled to hide the difficulty of removing tight jeans in a seductive manner. He had to believe that she was here for no other reason than to strip for him per the request of his friend.

How she’d get to the papers was still a raging question in her mind. Maybe she’d finish her dance and he’d have to use the bathroom to take care of the needs she inspired in him. Maybe she could pretend to use the bathroom and find a way to sneak into rooms until she found the hiding spot. Something had to work. And soon.

Her mask must have faltered, because his eyebrows drew together the slightest bit. She had lost him. She had allowed the spell to be broken, and that was a majorly rookie mistake.

Get him back…

Leave the pants on.

His command, dark and dry, startled her. Being told to leave her clothes on was a first.

He was interested in her, though, she could tell. She could feel his desire even though she stood five feet away from him. His face was as full of expression as a stone, but his energy betrayed him.

Maybe it was a fetish. Heck, she had heard plenty of weird stuff. Nothing would surprise her.

To test the theory, she pivoted and put her jeans back in place, dancing all the while. He gripped the arm of the couch as if holding on for dear life.

Good.

She had him.

Back under her spell.

So he liked his women clothed…maybe he enjoyed the allure of the unknown.

She worked her shoulders and her head, and then teased her shirt off, tossing it toward him. The shirt landed on his bare foot, but he didn’t kick it off. His eyes intensified as he took in the vision of her yellow push-up bra as her breasts threatened to spill over the top. She lifted her arms to showcase the most flattering view of her ribs and the soft mounds of her breasts—good dancer breasts, mediocre stripper breasts, but she refused to enhance them in any way other than the push-up bra. She had never had any complaints. She knew how to shimmy and use them to greatest effect.

As was evidenced by his suddenly quickened breath and the telltale way he chewed on the inside of his cheek.

Oh, the stone was beginning to bleed.

She had to take advantage of his vulnerability, so she danced closer and closer, never taking her eyes off his. She had to give him credit—he maintained eye contact the entire time.

For the first time in the history of her career, she wished he’d stare at her breasts instead.

His eyes were too intense. Too direct. Like he could see through her mask and deep into her soul.

Who was she kidding?

She had sold her soul a long time ago.

But still, a shiver tore through her and she erupted in goosebumps.

Are you cold?

Dammit. Talk about breaking the spell! He wasn’t supposed to want to take care of her!

He reached behind him and grabbed an afghan off the back of the couch. She took it from him, smiled, and incorporated it into her dance.

The stone broke into a decidedly warm grin.

You’re good…

You wanna see how good I can be? she purred, slipping a finger into her mouth so she could lightly chew the tip.

The corded muscles in his arms tightened briefly before he forced himself to relax. She made him nervous.

Good. Very good.

Confidence renewed, she moved to the next phase—lap dance.

He had never been the recipient of a lap dance—at least not a professional one. She had a sixth sense for this kind of thing. He had no idea how to respond, where to look, whether to touch or not touch. Scratch that. He was a gentleman and would never touch.

She was surprised he was even letting her get this close.

She could read him like a book, yet when she straddled his lap and rested her hands behind her on his knees, undulating softly, she got the strangest feeling that he was the one reading her.

Up close, his eyes told a romantic story.

He didn’t touch her—his hands remained planted at his sides. But his eyes…oh, his eyes. They made love to her. They devoured her. They caressed every inch of her, even the parts he couldn’t see.

A painful jolt ran through her, and she stopped undulating as if she had been stabbed in the spine.

She had never experienced the kind of passion she saw in his eyes. Lust, yeah. That was easy. She could evoke that in a stranger in the grocery store. But the tenderness he showed with the soft crinkling at the corner of his eyes… That was new for her.

She also experienced something she had never experienced in her line of work, nor that she wished to ever experience in this context again.

Attraction.

2

She hopped off him so fast, she startled herself. It wasn’t a smooth, stripper move or any sort of seductive technique. She lost herself for a moment and needed to regain control.

What the heck just happened?

She hated most aspects of stripping. She often felt demeaned and disempowered knowing she was using her sexuality to titillate men she had no desire to titillate. But it paid the bills and she was good at it, and since she had no other life plan, this was what she was stuck with.

But this…this was bad. Really bad.

She had danced for handsome men before. She had danced for powerful, wealthy men who had propositioned her and offered to put her up in exchange for more wish fulfillment than she was willing to offer. She had danced for repulsive men and managed to hide her disgust under the mask that made them fall in love with her stage character.

She had felt a lot of things while dancing. But not this.

Never, ever, ever had she experienced a jolt of attraction. Pure, primal, biologically-driven attraction.

His eyes, now filled with a combination of surprise, amusement, and that now-too-familiar-to-have-only-known-him-for-fifteen-minutes intensity that disturbed her in ways she couldn’t fathom, studied her. She broke the eye contact, unable to regain her dancing vibe.

She needed a new plan.

That’s all I’ve got. Harmony waved her hand in the air dismissively, awkwardly explaining away the crash ending to her otherwise perfectly acceptable spur of the moment dance.

She turned back to face him, eager to get her shirt back on. She felt more naked than she ever had before and more uncomfortable in her own skin than she had imagined she could feel.

He held her shirt out to her. She took it, careful to avoid brushing against his fingers. She turned away to get dressed as if she could hide from him in plain sight.

Her stripping gig may have provided her a cover for trying to get into a should-be-vacant house, but it had done nothing for getting her closer to the paperwork she so desperately needed.

Screw it. She’d wait until tomorrow and break in again. He’d have to leave the house eventually. The dog seemed friendly enough—he had sniffed her a bit when she first came in, then snuggled up in a dog bed across the room the rest of the time. He wouldn’t be a problem.

But Simplicity was supposed to be back tomorrow, and Harmony couldn’t take the chance that she’d bump into her.

She was screwed. She needed a plan.

She needed those damned papers.

And she needed to hurry, because there was no way the baby would still be sleeping, and it was unfair to keep Taniqua waiting for so long. She’d probably be worried and maybe a little nervous hanging out on the side of some weird little rural road with no streetlights or traffic. The poor girl hadn’t been able to stretch out in a bed in over twenty-eight hours—not that she’d ever complain to Harmony.

But Harmony was grateful beyond belief that Taniqua was such a big help, and she didn’t want to take advantage of her just because Taniqua had no one else and nowhere to go.

Harmony’s audience member leaned forward on the couch, resting his forearms on his legs, snapping her out of her thoughts and bringing her back to the moment.

Thank you for the dance. I wasn’t expecting anything like that tonight.

That’s sort of the point of a surprise. She cringed inwardly at the annoyance that crept into her tone. She forced a genuine-looking (she hoped) smile as she reached for her ugly sweatshirt, suddenly chilled to the smallest bones in her body.

You’re talented.

His complimented covered her like a warm blanket, and she fought the urge to cuddle into it.

You move like a flower in a gentle breeze. So beautiful.

A flower? Gentle breeze?

Normally compliments from clients had her fighting the urge to blatantly roll her eyes. Or to vomit and cover herself. His were on the corny side. And yet…

Coming from him, with